


Woven

by Meilan_Firaga



Category: American Gods (TV)
Genre: Explicit Language, F/M, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Corpses, Side Effects of Being Dead, by definition this pairing has squeamish elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 12:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meilan_Firaga/pseuds/Meilan_Firaga
Summary: Laura's used to herself being the rotting corpse, but she's not sure how to handle toting around Sweeney's. When she finally pauses to think, she finds herself sucked into another world and facing some interesting realities.





	Woven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_M](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/gifts).

> Be forewarned, I did very little research into Irish mythology for this piece. I read enough to take a few notes and then liberally altered everything I encountered to make the story I wanted. Most of it I just made up. Hope you like it all the same!

The trailer was surrounded by so much overgrown vegetation that she almost didn’t find it. It was lucky, really, given that she was hauling the corpse of a massive fucking leprauchan over her shoulder like the dead weight that he was. The door swung inward with little more than a tap, not even latched in its abandonment. Whatever something had been living inside scampered into the shadows before she could catch a glimpse through her rapidly deadening eyes. 

Laura kicked the door shut behind herself and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. Whoever had lived in the trailer before had taken most of what was useful with them. There was a card table in the kitchen, but no chairs. The couch had only two of the three cushions it was supposed to, and the giant hole she could see beneath one of those cushions indicated that more vermin might be inside. None of the remaining furniture was even remotely serviceable, so she dumped Sweeney on the floor. His head lolled to one side, arms and legs sprawling at awkward angles. She bent to straighten them out with a put upon sigh—thinking about anything but the reason why his limbs were limp and his chest was still—before backing away to lean against the door.

There was a twinge somewhere in Laura’s chest as she looked at his still form. She was the dead one. She was the rotting corpse, the one of the two of them that wasn’t going to make it through whatever insanity this whole god versus god fiasco was. He was a pain in the ass, but he was practically life itself. Even at his most miserable he was passion and enthusiasm in every breath. Sure, that passion was usually for a nasty fight or an abundance of SoCo, but it was still passion. The last thing that Sweeney had been in all the time she’d known him was still. Yet, there he was. Still as stone. Deader than her.

Laura’s legs gave out. She slid down against door until she was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees. There wasn’t much sensation left in her body, but her eyes felt scratchy when they closed and shut the vision of the great ginger brute away from her mind. Even after their argument back in New Orleans this wasn’t how she expected to find him again. He was supposed to wander into whatever diner she’d taken refuge in, spitting vitriol and maybe a tooth from his latest idiotic bar brawl. She should have tripped over him walking down some dingy alley, like all the other times they’d found each other without really looking. He was supposed to have been there when she got to Cairo, hateful as always but  _ still alive _ . She didn’t want to name the way it made her feel. It felt like Shadow walking away from her back in that first seedy motel room but a thousand times worse. The analytical part of her was muttering all kinds of terms that she wasn’t ready to think about— the kind of words Shadow had thrown at her practically from the moment they met. She’d run from words like that more often than she could count, including after her recent trip down to Louisiana. She needed to move. Needed to do something— _ anything _ —to stop considering why she found herself wishing she still had life enough to cry.

When she opened her eyes she was no longer on the floor of a dingy trailer. Sweeney’s body wasn’t stretched out in front of her. Her vision, which had been growing worse by the minute the farther she got from Coq Noir and the death loa, was not still clouded by the gray cast of death. The spray of the sea misted her face as it crashed against the stones beneath her feet. It stretched on and on before her until the dark waves merged with the blackness of the sky above. She knew without looking that there was a massive expanse of land at her back, but the thick mist that swirled about her body meant she probably wouldn’t see much if she bothered to stand and turn. It wasn’t the endless plains of sand she’d seen before she’d been yanked back to her body, but something in the back of her mind whispered that this place was like it all the same. 

“It should have been me that came for you before,” a voice said off to her left. The man it came from didn’t so much walk into her line of sight as he appeared from the mist like a ghost suddenly given form. “At least, it should have been if you were half of what you are now. Which you weren’t.” He gave a little laugh, his eyes focused on the sea. “S’pose we’ll never know for sure who should have taken you where.” His accent was thick and full rather than the brogue tempered by centuries of American living that she was used to, but she recognized it all the same.

“You’re Irish.” He didn’t bother to answer her while she struggled to her feet, instead smiling vaguely out at the rolling waves. He dwarfed her in the same way that Sweeney had, but unlike the leprechaun his hair was long and curling, a brunette so dark she might have likened it to chocolate. “Are you another death god?”

“Not much of a god these days if we’re being honest.” He tilted his head to one side. “Of course, the Tuath De were never exactly gods to begin with. At least, not in the same way that the others are gods. More fluid about the title, you see. The people who believe in us understand that in a way that other believers do not.” 

“Great,” Laura muttered, curious as to what he meant but unwilling to give in and ask. “Your people bother believing up a name for you?”

He laughed. “Manannan mac Lir, at your service.” He was charming, but the showy little bow he gave made Laura more inclined to grind her teeth.

“Is that supposed to make me like you?”

“I don’t imagine there’s much that can make you like someone on first meeting,” he mused. “I’ve ferried souls to the Otherworld, but it’s not the same as how some of the others operate.” He shook his head and turned fully towards her. She had to crane her neck to look up into his face, and she could see the depths of all the oceans in his eyes. “Death is not our business today, Laura McCabe.” The way he said her name—her  _ maiden name _ —sent a shiver down her spine. “I have something to show you.”

With a wave of his hand a path cleared through the mist. Knowing that she likely didn’t have much choice if she wanted to get back to her own world and out of whatever dreamland she’d been dragged to Laura followed him as me moved down the path and away from the shore. She couldn’t have said how long they walked over the rocky beach, but eventually the face of a massive cliff loomed up out of the fog. As they drew closer she realized that there was an entrance to some sort of cave on its shadowed face, and that was where Manannan was leading her. Torches lit as they passed into the cave, casting an eerie blue glow over them. When she looked behind she watched them wink back out once they were safely past. It was less of a wild cave than she expected and more of a warren of stone rooms honeycombed through the rock. She glanced in doorways as they went, unable to glean much in the dim light. She learned very quickly that the torches were following her leader rather than her since they went dark even if she fell behind, and he did not pause in their journey.

Manannan lead her up several flights of stairs and down more long corridors before his steps finally began to slow. He stopped outside one of the doors and gestured for her to enter ahead of him. As her feet crossed the threshold, the room brightened with a gray light that seemed to have no source. Where a ceiling should have been was a void that shouldn’t have been able to exist in such a small space. Hundreds of thousands of threads dangled down from the void before being drawn toward the strange, three-dimensional weaving in the middle of the room. There were  _ things _ collecting the threads and working them into the weaving. They looked like little clay figures that a child would make, but they moved with the same fluidity she’d expect to see in a pack cats dancing through a fish market. They moved constantly, dancing from thread to thread as they tethered lines into the weaving. The longer she looked, the more Laura realized that the weaving itself was an interpretation of Manannan mac Lir. His crooked smile was even replicated on its face.

“The problem with mortals,” he began in a soft voice from behind her, “is that no two of you believe in exactly the same way. You hear stories and your minds twist them into something that’s easier for you to comprehend, easier to relate to.” The tone of his voice stilled whatever snarky retort Laura might have made as she listened closely. “If the different beliefs about the same individual are left unchecked you get nothing but pockets of power without form. There’s no one to recieve prayers, give blessings, or smite those who go against their ways.” He paused and wandered into her line of sight, keeping well out of the way of the little weavers as they worked. “You might think that would be better for the mortals, but the majority of you need to believe in something to stay sane even if that something might do you harm. Belief can’t hold out forever without action.”

Laura nodded absently, moving to stand at his side. They were beneath a cluster of threads that didn’t seem to have much length to them. As they stood one of the weavers floated up, snagged one of the threads, and tugged it free of the void. It couldn’t have been more than a foot long, but the little creature danced over to the weaving and worked the thread into place with single-minded intensity. Manannan closed a hand over the end of another short thread and turned to look down at her. 

“Even the briefest moments of belief have power.” Without warning he seized Laura’s hand and brought it up to the thread. The instant her fingers touched it her mind was filled with the image of a statue and the thoughts of the mortal who’d been staring at it. They’d seen the statue on vacation, read a little bit about Manannan mac Lir on Google, and believed for just a few moments that he might have been real. 

She snatched her hand back with a gasp. While she’d touched the thread she felt that rush of belief. “That’s it?” she asked, clutching her hand to her chest like it had been burned. “That’s all it takes?”

Manannan nodded, then turned for the door. “That’s all it takes.” He led her down a flight of stairs and several more hallways, slowing only when her shorter legs couldn’t keep up with his lengthy stride. When he came to a halt outside another room Laura expected it to be full of more of the same. Indeed, there were threads a-plenty dangling from the ceiling void—many more than there had been in the other room—and a structure made of those threads in the room’s center. Most of a structure anyway. The figure was covered in shredded threads poking out in every direction. There were holes where old threads were beginning to wear away. Some features were obscured by the numerous flyaways, but there was enough of a face left to see. It was achingly familiar. She’d know that infuriating smirk anywhere, even if it was patterned with a myriad of colors from all the different threads woven in.

The floor beneath the figure was a massacre. Dark stains littered the stones in places where she could guess that the weavers once were. There was nothing left of their little grey bodies, but the floor was covered in threads. They gathered in piles in the corners, fell from the void to sprawl over the stones, and hung across the worn down effigy of Sweeney in the middle of the room. 

“When the weavers disappear after they’ve already started working the threads into one being, that being’s mind fractures.” There was grief in his voice now, and Laura couldn’t help but wonder what sort of relationship he and Sweeney had. “When he was cursed, the stories became his torment— he’s never sure what his reality is because instead of them being woven into a coherent history they’re scattered. He can see each story, and each one feels like the right history. He draws power from little patches at a time, but never all the belief that is his by right. ” He led her around the figure to a thick, dark thread hanging down from the back of the room and curling on the stone at their feet. Most of the strings were thin, but this one was wider more rope-like. Its color reminded her of the salt and pepper shade of a dark haired man who was going gray. “It could be fixed. The only thing that’s needed to resurrect the weavers is his power, here in this place.” He gave her a significant look and canted his head toward the dark thread. “Fear is a powerful motivator for someone to prevent that from happening.”

Laura took a deep breath and closed her hand around the thread. It was easier to be prepared when she knew the thoughts were coming, but nothing could have prepared her for whose thoughts had melded that particular thread. Images flashed behind her eyes like movie clips, all of Sweeney. In bars, covered in blood and grinning as he fought. Running through woods with a manic gleam in his eyes, looking as dangerous as a feral animal. On a battlefield in leather medieval armor and a crown, leading his men against an enemy. On another, much earlier battlefield wielding a vicious spear against creatures twice his size. Standing naked atop a hill, gleaming in the sun. An oily voice narrated everything she saw, talking about military prowess. Worrying about the warmth of the sun after a storm.

The oily voice was Wednesday. She was sure of it. And Wednesday was afraid of Sweeney. 

She released the thread with a start, stumbling back. “Wednesday’s kept him from fixing his mind.”

“For centuries,” Manannan confirmed. “The faithful carried him to America, but I’m still tied to the old country. Even if I could have found a way to get to him, Grimnir is too powerful for me to stand against.”

“What does it matter?” Laura asked, shaking her head. “He’s dead.”

“There’s only one way for one of us to truly die when belief in them still exists. Does it seem to you like Sweeney was particularly prone to suicide?” He gestured to the threads scattered about the room. “Does it look as though he is lacking in belief?”

She frowned. “I thought that no one believed in the old gods anymore.”

Manannan snorted. “A good myth to promote a war.” He stepped in close, forcing Laura to crane her neck to look up into his face. “For far too long I’ve been sure that I’d never see him whole. And then there was you.” 

“What the fuck do you think I can do?”

He tapped two fingers once, twice, thrice against her sternum. “It’s his power that I need to fix this. And you’ve carried it here.” He flattened his palm against her chest. Warmth spread through Laura’s body, emanating from the small golden disc nestled beside her heart. “I don’t even need much.”

Laura wrapped her fingers around his hand, gripping tightly. “That coin is the only thing keeping me moving.”

“You’ll still have it when I’m done,” he assured her. “You’re tied to this tale now, after all.” With the hand that wasn’t pressed against her he reached for another thread—this one the same brown as her own hair—and held it against her cheek. She closed her eyes against the onslaught as an echo of every thought she’d ever had about Sweeney played through her mind. She saw their every interaction from the moment he’d stomped into her hotel room like a picture show behind her eyes. The numbness that had overtaken her since her death disappeared in an instant, and she felt a rush of sorrow as she watched her own memories of him. Just as quickly as they began they ended, laying him out on the dirty trailer floor the last memory she saw.

When she opened her eyes, tears were running down her cheeks. The room was humming with activity. With a glance to either side, she found a host of busy little creatures gathering up loose threads, working with frantic annoyance to weave them into belonging. They were different from the weavers in the other room, and there were more of them. Where the others had been a dull gray color, these were the same shade as a cup of warm milk mixed with a spoonful of honey. She turned her back to Manannan to face the center of the room. A warm, yellow glow emanated from the effigy of Sweeney as though it were lit from within by the light of the sun. One of the weavers floated up level with its face, and as Laura watched it wove the unending strand of her own belief into the faded scars she knew now peppered Sweeney’s visage.

She whirled around, scrubbing the tears from her eyes. “That was it?” she demanded. “You cop a feel and he’s fixed?”

“It will take time. Hundreds of years of belief must be worked into place.” His eyes were drawn over her shoulder, a brief flicker of surprise crossing his features, but before she could follow his gaze he shook himself and grasped her arm. “I owe you a debt, Laura McCabe,” he told her, taking hold of her at both elbows. For the first time, she noticed signs of age on his serious face. “The strength you have will be an asset to the both of you in the battles to come. I cannot take that from you now.” Then he smiled. “But when the battle is done, if you still want it, I will give you the gift you seek.” Before she could say anything else, Manannan mac Lir pressed a kiss to her forehead and everything went black. 

Once she was gone, Manannan dodged around the weavers working to repair the Sun King’s effigy and stepped across the hall. When he’d been occupied with the dead woman another archway had appeared in the cave wall. That in itself was surprising enough, but it wasn’t nearly as shocking as what he saw when he stood in the opening and looked upon what else had appeared. The threads hanging from the ceiling were few and far between. In all his many years, he’d never seen so few in one of the caves. It shouldn’t even have been enough to warrant the space. Flitting from one rope of belief to the next, two weavers the color of red clay danced around a new figure.

It was barely even a bust fed by less than a dozen threads. Though a few were the thinner beliefs of mortals, most were the wide-stranded thoughts of beings like himself. Laura McCabe’s face was already clearly represented. Most of the threads that sketched her perfectly detailed features were dark, but they were worked upon a base made from a single, thick cord that was still feeding down from the void above. Manannan brushed a hand over the braided cable where it dangled loose from the bottom of the bust and began to laugh.

Its color, of course, was the most brilliant and familiar shade of ginger.

~*~*~*~*~*~

When she came to, Laura was back on the trailer floor. Night had fallen and passed again. The gray light of dawn was beginning to creep through the dingy windows, but most of the room was in shadow. In the days since she’d left New Orleans her dark vision had gotten progressively worse, but she found herself able to see the details of the room even more clearly than she might have before she’d died. Details like the fact that Sweeney’s corpse was no longer strewn over the floor.

She pushed herself to her feet and away from the door. The hallway leading further into the trailer was across the room, and she made her way toward it with caution. Two steps down the hall she tripped over one of Sweeney’s massive boots. The other boot was another step away, his layered shirts scattered ahead of it. Slightly clearer light than what had been in the living room—maybe from a window with less obstruction—emanated from one of the doorways down the hall. She made her way toward it, eyes focused on the swaying shadow of a man the light cast against the wall.

He was standing, bare but for his faded blue jeans, in front of a mirror with a long crack running horizontally through its middle. His hair and stubble were the same untidy mess they had ever been, but the rest of him… She’d seen all of him there was to see in New Orleans and what he was now was, for lack of better words,  _ more _ . His shoulders were broader, his muscles larger and more defined. He even looked a little taller. There was a dark, puckered scar on his chest and a matching smaller one on his back where the hole from the spear had been. His fingers traced the edges of the one at his front while he stared at his reflection. There was an expression on his face that she’d never seen before. Manic grins or angry frowns she was used to, but this was more like contemplation. The deep furrow of his brow was relaxed and smooth, his eyes wide with wonder.

All at once those eyes found hers in the mirror’s surface. She’d been beginning to worry that something was wrong, that he wouldn’t be the same. That fear disappeared at the barely contained spark of wildness dancing through his irises.

“You look even less dead than last time,” he rasped, a slight smirk pulling at one corner of his mouth. “Do in another god, did ya?” Banter, thankfully, was familiar territory.

“Must have been a present from your friend,” Laura told him with a shrug. 

He frowned. “Not sure I’d call the Baron a friend.”

“I wasn’t talking about him.”

Sweeney was across the room in an instant. He yanked her through the doorway with one hand and crowded her against a wall. She should have thrown him across the room, and at any other moment she absolutely would have, but the moment his skin brushed hers the strangest thing happened. Her heart began to beat. And then it didn’t stop. Warmth rushed through her body, radiating out from where his coin rested in the middle of her chest. It was Shadow’s kiss times a million, the result of the smoke Brigitte had blown in her face multiplied by a number too large to comprehend. Her mind ran a mile a minute, thoughts whirling so fast that the only thing she could do was stare into his face while her heart hammered and her body hummed.

His hands came up to cup her face turning her head from one side to the other while his eyes searched over her. “You made a deal,” he snarled. “I can see it on you. Who the fuck did you tangle yourself up with now?”

“Stop that,” Laura hissed, batting his hands away. The beat of her heart didn’t stop when he was no longer touching her. It didn’t even slow. She shook her head, kicking away the concern of what was going on inside her body to focus on the more immediate conversation. It was all getting to be too much after the day she’d had. “Why do you care?”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. Could have something to do with the fact that every time you get into something different I end up getting the bejesus kicked out of me.”

“You get the crap kicked out of you whether I’m around or not.”

“Right, because that excuses your bullshit.” He took a deep breath, clearly preparing to launch into one nonsensical rant or another, and froze, his eyes going wide. He flattened his palms against the wall on either side of her head, caging her with his body as he leaned in and pressed his face to her hair. Laura’s heart pounded while he took another deep breath. “You smell like the sea,” he croaked after a long moment. “And home.” The tip of his nose dragged along her cheek as he pulled back to look her in the eyes. “Who have you been dealing with, dead wife?”

“Manannan mac Lir.”

Shock colored his features at the name. His spine straightened. “Manannan mac Lir,” he repeated with a slow smile crossing his lips. He huffed out a short laugh. “I didn’t even know that crazy fuck was still alive. He—” It was almost like Laura could see the gears click into place inside his skull. He froze mid-word, jaw falling slack. “I know exactly who he is, and exactly what he was to me.” The sheen of tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

“He said it would take time,” Laura told him quietly, sagging against the wall and trying to slow her racing heart. “You’ve been bat-shit crazy for centuries, so it’s not going to be a quick fix.” She pushed some of her usual tartness back into her voice, desperate to be on comfortable ground. “Wherever the hell he took me is fucked, by the way. Weird little clay figures and—” 

Suddenly, she found her feet dangling just past his knees, her body held tight to his chest. One of his arms was banded across the back of her shoulders while the other was wrapped across her hips. Even with her lifted off the ground he was still so much larger than her that her face was only level with his collarbone. His face was buried against the top of her head, every heaving breath ruffling her hair. He was murmuring something in Irish, a stream of words that she had no hope of translating. Still, something whispered through her mind that the things he was saying would probably make a normal woman blush if the tenderness of his tone was anything to go by.

She pushed against the center of his chest until he dropped the arm across her shoulders. She leaned away from him until she could see his face. Her hands found their way to his shoulders to catch her balance and gripped so hard that she could see the bruises beginning to form beneath her fingers. There were tears on his cheeks, though he was working to brush them away by the time she had tilted back far enough to look him in the eye.

“I’ll owe you for this one, lass,” he teased. He didn’t seem to be spending any effort to hold her up by the arm still barred over her hips. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done.”

Laura rolled her eyes. “Oh, save it.” The way he was looking at her had butterflies dancing in her stomach, and she didn’t like it one bit. “Will the new and improved you be able to actually do something against Wednesday, or are you just going to up and die again?”

“Oh, I’ll manage.” His lazy, arrogant smirk was one she’d seen a thousand times before. There was a knowing look in his eyes, like he could see her trying to shift the subject away from the change in dynamic between them, that made her skin buzz with nerves. 

“Good.” She should have shoved him away, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it. “Your friend said something about battles, and the crazy Indian chick at the diner with all the arms said I needed help if I’m going to take the old fuck down.”

Sweeney nodded, and his next smile was all feral intensity. “Oh, I don’t need any convincing to go after that one-eyed cunt.” He held out the arm that wasn’t keeping her pinned to his body, and flicked his wrist. A spear appeared in his hand, a few gold coins clattering to the ground in its wake. He winked at her and grinned just like he always did when he was ready to pick a fight. “You know, he convinced me this was his, but I think it’s been mine before.”

As if on cue, sunlight broke through the trailer window, bathing him in a brilliant, golden glow. He rapped the butt of the spear against the ground. The runes along its surface twitched like a stubborn and refusing to be shook from a blanket. Sweeney struck the spear against the floor again, and the sunlight gathered in every carving. Laura watched as the runes began to tremble. On the third strike, an explosion of light ripped out of the shaft, and she buried her face in the crook of her elbow to shield her eyes. When it dimmed and she could look upon the weapon again the runes were completely gone. A handful of markings—like sticks laid out on the ground—were etched in shimmering gold just below the blade, which looked even more sharp and vicious now.

“Fucking mine now,” Sweeney laughed. With another spray of coins he sent the spear back to his horde. “Just one more spot o’ business before we head off.”

Once more, Laura found her back against the trailer’s wall, one of Sweeney’s massive hands the only thing that stopped her head from cracking through the fragile drywall. His lips were on hers before she could protest, wild and unyielding. He bit her bottom lip until she opened for him, and then plundered her mouth with his tongue. He tasted like sunshine and a cold beer at a summer picnic, life itself in every breath. He kissed her until her head was spinning, until long after the point where she realized she was glad she was dead and didn’t need the oxygen. By the time he finally pulled away every inch of her body was humming with energy, her heart and his coin throbbing in tandem inside her chest.

And just like that she was back on her feet. She swayed a bit as he moved away, caught between wanting to regain some sort of control and demanding that he come back and ravage her. Sweeney leaned out the door into the hall and scooped up his shirts. He shrugged into his undershirt and pulled up his suspenders before pausing to lean against the doorframe and look her over.

“Wanting is a much better look on you than dead and rotting,” he told her in a warm voice that was thick as honey. “Best we keep you looking that way.” He was out the door and down the hall before she could reply, calling back to her as he moved back toward the main room. “We’ll talk more about that heartbeat o’ yours and what to do with my coin when that greasy, silver-tongued piece of shit is dead.”


End file.
